MacBook Retina Displays have a ghosting issue Apple won’t repair

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One of the major draws to the new range of MacBooks is that fantastic Retina Display. But it turns out there may be a flaw that ruins your viewing experience, and one that Apple isn’t willing to repair.

Matthew Cleevely has been an Apple user for the past 11 years, and a few months ago dropped $3,000 (with Apple Care) on a MacBook Pro with Retina Display. He’s not happy, though, because that Retina Display is faulty due to a very noticeable ghosting issue. The problem is, Apple doesn’t regard this type of ghosting as worthy of repair.

Cleevely first noticed an issue on the unlock screen when lines appeared across the display. Those lines also appeared when switching from a text document to viewing a photo. This ghosting detracted from the overall quality of the viewing experience and would definitely be annoying, so he went to see an Apple Genius in a bid to get it repaired.

Apple has set tests it can carry out to determine whether specific components are faulty. In the case of a display demonstrating ghosting, they place a black and white grid on the screen for 3 minutes followed by a completely gray screen for 1 minute. If the grid pattern is visible in the gray, the display is faulty and gets repaired.

The problem is, the ghosting Cleevely’s MacBook Pro is experiencing does not show up on this test and therefore he doesn’t get a free repair. Instead, he’s having to pay to replace the screen himself. It seems the ghosting isn’t apparent with black on white, but it is very apparent for different shades of gray on white as the images included here clearly show. Cleevely even carried out the Apple test himself using a grid of shades of gray, and the ghosting is obvious:

This has left Cleevely out of pocket and angry at Apple for not fixing a clear problem. I’m also seeing other people pop up since he posted about this and say they have the exact same problem with their Retina Displays.

Apple needs to respond to this simply by introducing another test that doesn’t just involve using black and white. If it doesn’t, depending on how widespread a problem it is, they are going to have a growing group of very angry MacBook owners, many of whom won’t be willing to pay for replacement displays.